Mobile technology has certainly come a long way in the past few years or so, and it may just break benchmarks once again in a few more years as Nokia unveils details about a prototype cellphone they have in development. This one has all the fancy-schmancy wireless features : SMS, 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and wireless recharging.

Yes, wireless recharging. The Nokia prototype uses a unique technology that allows the cellphone to harvest the ambient radio waves around it – FM/AM radio, television, cellphone signals, ham radios, and the like – and use those to generate electricity for its own consumption, enough at least to power itself and its mobile phone functions. At any given time, the radio waves that travel through our immediate vicinity, wherever we are, is so dense that the combined electromagnetic energy that can be harnessed from them all should be enough to power a small device like a mobile phone.

The planned use case for the technology is similar to the kinetic technology present in most modern watches: the phone recharges when it is idle. Granted, the 5 milliwatts of electricity that can be generated by the prototype at present is insufficient (the long-term goal is to increase that to 50 someday), it should be significant enough to slowly charge the mobile phone’s battery when it is idle. While this amount of electricity will (probably) never be able to sustain the consistency required of a call, for example, the additional benefit is definitely significant.

Nokia plans to commercialize the technology sometime in around three to five years.

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